Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, and Cloud Peak Energy, the three largest coal companies in the United States, have made a practice of relying heavily on subsidized federal coal, Greenpeace said in a report Thursday. “Each of these three coal mining companies depend on federal coal for the vast majority of the coal they mine in the US. Federal coal accounted for 88 [percent] of Cloud Peak Energy’s total coal production, 83 [percent] of Arch Coal’s, and 68 [percent] of Peabody Energy’s total 2014 US coal production,” the report finds.
Currently, approximately 41 percent of the nation’s coal is harvested from federal lands at heavily subsidized prices. This practice is not in line with the nation’s climate goals, the report says, applauding the moratorium on coal leasing on federal lands the Interior Department issued in mid-January.
“In effect, these coal mining companies are the beneficiaries of a major corporate welfare program. Yet even while they’ve grown from their access to subsidized federal coal, these same companies have attempted to position themselves as victims of the federal government, and continue to try and block or delay federal policies aimed at addressing climate change and reducing air and water pollution,” the report says.
The coal leasing program is essential to the prosperity of the nation, a representative from Peabody Energy told GHG Daily in response to the report. “The federal leasing program brings enormous revenues to the federal government through a host of taxes and royalties, benefitting Americans through improved family budgets and a stronger GDP thanks to abundant, low-cost coal. The way to a lower-carbon future is through technology, not by attempting to deprive Americans of the low cost reliable electricity that coal represents,” the representative wrote.
